Their tagline is literally ‘you buy it, you own it’. But does it really grants ownership?
They allow you to make as many offline backup copies of the games’ installers as you want and you don’t need to use any of their services after purchase (except downloading from their site), it’s as close as it gets to “digital ownership”
They allow you
No, this is a lie. Copyright law itself allows you to make copies for backup. GOG merely follows the law without trying to gaslight you otherwise, like other online game sellers do.
You keep attacking other people who are on the same side as you. What specific law are you referring to?
That really depends in what you think ‘ownership’ is. You can download offline installers and patches. But you can not use the assets of the game to create and sell a new game. You also cannot just create and sell other games heavily based on those games. Or use the music freely in YouTube videos with enabled commercials, and so on.
You don’t fully own it.
Ownership of an individual copy is different from being the copyright holder, but that does not mean “you don’t fully own” your individual copy.
You also dont own your individual copy, just like with any other installer you merely have the license to use it which can be revoked anytime.
Not to say you’re wrong, but in that line of thinking we don’t really own anything. I bought a physical book but can’t reproduce it even if I rewrite it slightly. I bought a car, but I can’t reproduce it even if I had the means. I believe OP is asking about DRM.
The only way you truly get ownership over an software or game is through piracy. Any other way in theory (I think?), they can still just take away the game and/ or software from you.
Sure, in the same way that stealing a physical object gives you rightful, legal ownership of that object. Which is to say, not even slightly.
In reality, the way to have ownership of a copy of a piece of software is to legally obtain it (either via purchase or by being given it for free by someone who has the right to do that, e.g. in the case of Free Software).
Some entities you buy games from might have the technical ability to remove/destroy your property and might even get away with doing so, but that doesn’t mean it somehow isn’t theft.
Technical ability != legal right, in both cases.
If you refer to Piracy, I’m not even going to debate the whole ‘‘stealing vs not stealing’’. Think however you want about it.
🙄 “Copyright infringement is not theft” is usually an argument I’m the one making, but that’s not the point right now. It was meant to be an analogy, not a strict equating of the two concepts.
The point is that acquiring something by other-than-legal means, whatever they are and regardless of whether the act of transference was a crime or a civil tort, does not confer legal ownership. That’s just a fact, not an ethical judgement, and isn’t really debatable.
I understand you are trying to drag me into a debate. I’m not going to. You do you.
I understand that you’re grasping at straws to avoid addressing the essential part of my argument (which, restated again, is that you can’t receive legal ownership from somebody who doesn’t have the right to give it to you), which is tantamount to conceding the point.
You can download the installer from GOG and then use it to instal as ypu wish, without the need to use GOG from that point forward. It’s the same concept, just without the piracy.
Aight, cool. Glad that’s possible. I’m still bit wary about these kind of stuff with companies. Even with GOG.
And how would they do that? Knock on my door on a Sunday morning, enter and trash my external hard drives where I keep the backup installers?
Knock on my door on a Sunday morning, enter and trash my external hard drives where I keep the backup installers?
Yes.
Yes. So does buying it on Steam, or anywhere else.
Anyone claiming otherwise is LYING TO YOU.
You have no idea what you are talking about lol
Oh really? Explain how I’m wrong, then!
You are arguing from the rights consumers are supposed to have. Everyone else is arguing from the rights consumers do have. Hope this clears up the confusion for you.
Just because a right is infringed upon doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Moreover, being subjugated under tyranny doesn’t mean you should accept the rhetorical framing of the tyrant!
Steam shill detected.
What the fuck is wrong with you? Defending property rights is not shilling for Steam! Fuck Steam; it’s part of the problem when it comes to pushing this “licensed, not sold” bullshit!
If you aren’t a steam shill, why are you lying that steam gives you ownership of a game? It doesn’t. GoG does.
I’m not lying. Why are you lying in Steam’s favor, trying to pretend it’s entitled to powers it doesn’t have?
Steam dishonestly tries to pretend that buying a copy of a game is somehow something other than buying that copy, but Steam is not fucking entitled to override copyright law and the uniform commercial code!
If anything, you’re the one shilling for Steam – I’m attacking it!
Either you’re an AI with like 1k parameters or you’re the most confused individual I’ve met today.
- OP asks if GOG gives you ownership
- you say so does steam
- I say that’s not true, you shill
- you turbo lose your shit and say you’re attacking steam
- I ask why you’re saying Steam supposedly grants you ownership, affirming that GoG does
- you accuse me of being a shill for saying Steam doesn’t grant ownership
Let’s take a step back to see if we’re on the same page
- GoG grants you ownership of your purchases
- Steam grants you a licence of your purchases
- GoG good
- Steam bad
Let’s take a step back to see if we’re on the same page
- GoG grants you ownership of your purchases ← Wrong (in a minor way). Federal law itself grants you ownership of your purchases; GoG merely follows the law.
- Steam grants you a licence of your purchases ← WRONG! Steam claims this, but Steam is lying to try to deprive you of your property rights.
- GoG good
- Steam bad ← Agreed, but not because games bought from them are “licensed, not sold.” Steam is bad for misrepresenting them as being “licensed, not sold” and using technical means to frustrate your ability to exercise your property rights.
Now quit calling me confused, because my claims have been entirely consistent throughout this entire thread.
- When you buy a copy of a copyrighted work, you own that copy of that copyrighted work. Not merely “license” it.
- Software is not an exception to this.
- Corporations do not have some kind of magic privilege to override Federal law, no matter how much they dishonestly claim otherwise.
Yes. You can download the installers and patches. Put them on a hard-drive, shut down your computer, put the hard drive into another computer and install the game without ever connecting to the internet if you have wine on your system.
It’s yours.
I just shared all my GOG games with my family and they could install the games without a hitch. They could import it to Steam and Heroic and play it from there. Can’t do that with Steam.
I just shared all my GOG games with my family and they could install the games without a hitch. They could import it to Steam and Heroic and play it from there. Can’t do that with Steam.
Steam tries to obstruct you from doing it, but Federal law gives you the right. Quit spreading misinformation about Steam having the power to override your property rights, because it doesn’t.
What Federation is being Federal to you? If it’s the USA, overriding your property rights was the whole purpose of the DMCA.
Even accepting the argument that a tyrannical law invalidates rights rather than violating them (which I don’t, BTW), the DMCA only applies to things that are DRM’d, not everything on Steam.
What is allowed to do and what it does differ. Stop being so blind.
And that makes it injustice that needs to be resisted!
What the fuck is wrong with you, that you just want to accept the enemy’s usurpation of your rights?
The notion that corporations get to unilaterally change the law to redefine what “buying” and “ownership” mean is some Stockholm syndrome, late-stage-capitalist, ass-backwards insanity. Snap the fuck out of it!
Did you ever manage to get steam to let you import a gog game and install mods from steam’s modding community?
Stellaris mods are essentially only on steam, and my “buy from GOG whenever possible” rule means I have a gog copy instead of a steam one. And non-steam downloading of steam mods is a PITA.
Mods from steam modding community? I didn’t even know that existed xD I used r2modman and vortex mod manager (for nexus mods) for mods. Nexus Mods has mods for Stellaris. There’s absolutely no need for Steam in my world.
This is what I do too. The first thing I do after buying from GoG is to download the installers, both Windows and Linux. So I don’t have to download again and again every time I install. I can carry a copy around and install it on an offline machine too. I also share my games with my family, just like sharing discs in the old time. If some of them like one of the games, they’ll buy it again themselves. If this is not owning games in practice, I don’t know what is.
You’ve never owned software in your life. Everything you’ve ever purchased is a license to use software. Even when you had physical media. Even when you own a disc or a cartridge.
Even FOSS.
If a company wanted to revoke it, it would be illegal for you to use that physical media. Enforcing it would be pretty unrealistic, but they could sue you for copyright infringement if they revoked your license and then found out you used it anyway.
The notion that software is “licensed, not sold” is a LIE perpetrated by the copyright cartel. In factual reality, you DO OWN the copy of the software you buy, regardless of what some bullshit invalid EULA purports to say!
That’s complete bullshit:
Software I’ve written is owned by me.
Open-source licenses (F/LOSS) mostly cannot be revoked.
Public domain exists.
Can you transfer your games legally to another person?
There is your answer.
It gives you the ability to download an installer you can use as needed. I don’t know if that technically counts as ownership but it’s better in that sense than say, steam is, which requires you to download/install through their client.
There are DRM free games on steam. Take, for example, Ballistic.NG, one of if not the best AG Racer of all time.
You get the installer? Or you can copy the game directory elsewhere and just run it? Not trying to argue with you just wondering how it works because I wasn’t aware of that.
Invalid weblink, so I’ll link the store page for BallisticNG, for anyone else who wants to take a peek
I have all of mine backed up on a hard drive. They have nothing preventing me from using them on the last working computer at the end of the world
What it grants you is the ability to download and install the game as you see fit with no DRM software getting in the way. You don’t even have to use their launcher if you don’t want.
Steam allows the exact same thing FYI, they just don’t see the need to needlessly promote it to get sales.
Steam allows DRM and even offers its own. You also can’t download anything without the launcher, even if the game is DRM-free.
GOG also allows DRM, it’s just not as common
Can you please elaborate on and define what DRM is “allowed” on GOG? From my most recent understanding, you can still play offline and don’t need to use the GOG launcher or some other launcher that requires an Internet connection.
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_on_gog_list_of_singleplayer_games_with_drm/page1 The list is still maintained
I get and respect that people have different places where they draw lines. But to me, it doesn’t seem like they are abandoning the concept of DRM free in any real way. The majority of these have small bits of extra content, often cosmetic, like twitch drops that need the software to be online to redeem/verify.
For the few games on that list that are actually unplayable or crippled in some way, I am disappointed. For additional free or giveaway content from the developer that is part of the original package distributed through GOG, I’m much more understanding of GOG if the developer failed to accommodate offline verification/unlocking of that content.
I know that those exist. So enlighten me, how do I download them without the launcher?
The developer has a link sometimes, or otherwise any other mirror or torrent can work as well.
I little leg work isn’t gonna kill you ;)
You can download and then copy games with steam, that is the choice of the developer.
Sure. Where is the game installer you can download or the installed game you can download, disconnect from the internet, close steam, and run/install the game?
You could just go down the thread to see the links….
DRM free games are movable, that fits your rant yeah?
The installed files are not an installer. What you’re referencing is moving the preexisting program files of a game
Which is the entirety of the game, they also had that on their many itemmed rant. So why would you need an installer, when you have the entire game anyways?
”or the installed game”
oh? how?
The exact same way as gog, download the files to your pc.
huh? that’s not even what gog sells itself on. gog offers offline installers. steam takes care of installation itself. you can’t download a game from steam, put it on a usb drive, give it to someone else, and have confidence that they will be able to run it.
Years ago the was an option called something like download offline backup, I haven’t used steam in a long time so maybe it still possible. I didn’t like it back then because I still needed steam to install it, that means that I still need to log in at least once to be allowed to install the game.
yeah those files were encrypted in some way that required the steam client to unlock, if i recall.
That’s not true at all…
Where are you getting your information from?
Why do you need an installer when the files are its own folder?
Installers deal with more than just unpacking files into a folder. There are often prerequisite shared libraries that are included in the installer that AREN’T in the game directory, which may or may not need to be installed along with the game depending on if your system already has it.
So just double-clicking the .exe after copying the folder to a new computer is not reliable in the same way GOG’s installers are.
steam. note that i said “a game”, not “a drm-free game”.
And we’re talking about drm free games, which GoG only provides, which means it’s also drm free on Steam…. Steam provides OTHER games that of course have drm.
Of course Steam has its own drm, I never said they didn’t. The picture also talks about this as well… did you not read it?
Steam’s primary function since day 1 is literally DRM, you have no clue what you are talking about. Steam offers features like offline play but there’s console-like caveats there forcing periodic logins and launcher usage.
yes there are drm-free games on steam. this does not disprove their point. steam’s first role was as drm for half life 2. steam stops working if you don’t log in periodically.
And if you download a drm free game it doesn’t need to sync to Steam. You’re providing false information. The link specifies this.
Why are you claiming it does? Where did you get this information?
??? ??? ???
If you’re buying a game on GoG, it’s because it’s drm free. Which means it’s also drm free on Steam. So anyone looking at those games, would understand the context that we’re talking about the same type of games.
FIFA isn’t available of GoG, so of course we wouldn’t be talking about the same thing on Steam. You’re making massive assumptions dude. The talk has always been about drm free games, no one changed the topic.
Steam states in their EULA that your purchase a license to play the game but not own it
So does GOG dude…
where
https://programming.dev/comment/23071365
This isn’t quite right. You do not own the game, you are purchasing a non-transferable license, bound to you:
2.1 We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a ‘license’) to use GOG services and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content. This license is for your personal use.
3.3 Your GOG account and GOG content are personal to you and cannot be shared with, sold, gifted or transferred to anyone else.
It’s simply a boon that they entitle you to download DRM-free binaries but technically, if that license is revoked by GOG, you are not legally entitled to use or store that binary anymore. Practically, however, is a different story.
points two and three are for different things.
No they aren’t. Both mean that you don’t own the game.
their eula does not state that you do not own the games.
Section 2.1:
We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a ‘license’) to use GOG services and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content. This license is for your personal use. We can stop or suspend this license in some situations, which are explained later on. You have the personal right to use GOG content and services. This right can be suspended or stopped by us in some situations.
What part of “license” is so hard for you to comprehend?
You can only download steam games from the steam app. You can download gog games from the site, without using their galaxy app
That is a fair distinction, but once it’s downloaded and installed they are effectively identical.
Some steam games might still have the steampi and steamworks dll’s, so that’s still 2 bits that need to be deleted before they’re effectively identical.
Having the installers can be important, not every game may work out of the box if you only copy the installed folder to a different machine, some important configurations that are set up in different folders, like in
appdata%, might be missing. Steam checks if DirectX and the proper MSVC versions are installed, I suppose the GOG installers do that as well.According to the websites, you’re able to move it, and it provides those instructions on how to deal with those minor issues.
So in the end, following dev instructions, they will be the same in the end.
Edit Like so
GOG lets you download installers for all your games that you can back up somewhere so that you can install and run their DRM free games without GOG or even an internet connection. It’s like back when games came on cd/dvd.
Steam is DRM so in most cases you can’t launch any of your games without the Steam client. Steam does sell some games that are DRM free on Steam, but you still need the Steam client to install them.
So the difference here is that you can use GOG to build your own library of DRM free games that don’t need GOG at all. if GOG ceased to exist, you can still install and play all your games on any device you want.
If Steam ceased to exist, you’d have no way to install your games on any device so you’d only be able to play the games you currently have installed, and only if they’re DRM Free.
Kind of depends on what definition of ownership you want to use.
Can you re-sell it? No.
Can you give it away? No.
Can you bequeath it in your will? No.
So no, I don’t think so. Personally I prefer Steam’s more recent approach of just very clearly telling you that what you are paying for is a license for use. I find Gog’s redefinition of the word “own” distasteful.
You can make as many copies as you want of the games you downloaded and they are not tied to your account. You can just give away a copy of the game. You can not sell it officially/legally but you could give someone a copy for cash. I think you could leave someone a hard-drive full of games in your will.
If you cannot do it legally then it’s not legally ownership. You are talking about de facto ownership, which is another thing entirely.
I can totally bequeath in my will a safety deposit box with notes containing all if the credentials required to access all of my accounts and devices, functionally giving away my Gog account. However, if Gog or any of the publishers involved find out that I am legally dead they can totally ban that account and pursue legal action against anyone else who accessed it, violating terns of service
No it doesn’t. It’s just a digital use license like in any other store. Here’s the relevant part from their User agreemet
We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a ‘license’) to use GOG services and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content
That is legally the same as any other store out there.
So why does GoG make a big fuss about that? Well, it’s mostly a PR stunt, but there is some truth to it. Games sold on GoG are, majorly, DRM-free (although not 100% of them, but close to it), this means that you can backup your game installer and install it and play it in the distant future even if GoG is no more. The reason why this is mostly a PR stunt is that you can do the same with most games from other stores as well, except you backup the game folder instead of the installer, because (and this is the part I think people always miss) if a game is on Gog and any other store it’s almost assuredly DRM free in ALL stores.
Don’t get me wrong, GoG is great and their policy on DRM is something that I think other companies should really imitate. But it’s not the be all and end all that some people make it out to be, and to me personally when I have to decide where to invest my money my choices are between a company that has a relatively decent DRM policy but doesn’t care for me as a customer, and a company that has literally spent millions making my gaming experience as a Linux user better, it’s a no contest. If I was on Windows I might consider buying more stuff from GoG because of their DRM policy, but being able to easily play games on Linux is more important for me than DRM.
They also do restoration on old games, to make them run fine on todays OS and hardware. Recent example of me: Outcast A new beginning.
What? How is a game from 2024 old? Also how is GoG involved in that at all?
Edit: I’ve been reading on the story of that game, and I think I know what you meant.
While Outcast: a new beginning is a new game, you probably meant the OG outcast game, which is from 1999. There was a 4 year window where the original game was only available on GoG because they patched a community mod into it. But in 2014 1.1 version was released for Steam with some more improvements, and in 2017 the game was remade. GoG doesn’t seem to have been involved in either of those, only on the original 2010 re-release including the community mod as a built-in.
I meant Second Contact, mixed them up.
Second contact is the 2017 remake of the game I mentioned, GoG was not involved in that.
Hey, great comment. You touched on everything, and did it with nuance.
Since the beginning of app stores and the release of Windows 8, Valve have seen the writing on the wall (see Apple v. Epic later) and realized they needed their own platform. It’s all about Steam OS.
The interests of Linux users and Valve merely coincide.
As for me, with a 99% single player games library, the most important thing is no mandatory launcher and no updates. Click, boom, I’m in the game.
So using GOG when possible.The interests of Linux users and Valve merely coincide.
I’m not naive, I don’t think that Valve is doing anything out of the goodness of their heart. But they’re investing on something I care about, so me giving them money is an indirect way to invest in that.
As for me, with a 99% single player games library, the most important thing is no mandatory launcher and no updates. Click, boom, I’m in the game.
So using GOG when possible.Mostly agree (except I don’t mind updates, you can always play without updating if you want to), and the fact that that’s my experience with Steam is a big part of why I buy from them. I can go from not owning a game to play it with just a few controller buttons, whereas with GoG I would have to:
- Plug a mouse and keyboard to my gaming rig
- Install a browser on that machine
- Navigate to the website and download the installer
- Figure out a good wine version to use and create a new profile for the game
- Install any needed wine tricks to that profile
- Manually create a shortcut for that game using that wine profile
- Add the shortcut to some third party UI to be able to navigate to it with a controller
So yeah, the whole “click, I’m in the game” only works on Windows, which is why I said I can understand Windows users preferring GoG.
I should have been clearer, I don’t mind the initial configuration, it’s the subsequent launches I want to be instant. That’s the feature I find most excellent on the Steam Deck: instant resume. You pick up your console because you have 15mn to kill and actually game 15mn.
This has not been my experience with Steam on desktop however. I don’t game everyday, and not all my games were on Steam (when I was still using it semi regularly), and I would invariably wait for Steam to update, followed by the various utilities and the games. And if it was a new machine, having to remember where to disable the damn ad popup …
With a fast Internet and playing often I’m sure it’s way less of an issue.
Oh and when I had network problems and it would take a long time before going in offline mode every time.you can always play without updating if you want to
Can you? I never saw a straightforward way to do this.
I still have a partition running Windows for modded Skyrim, and the cardinal rule is never ever run it from Steam in case there’s been an update, which would mess up the modlist.My other issue is ideological: I don’t think they do anything unethical but I don’t like having this private company’s always online closed source software running in the background on my computer.
Clearly people are happy with Steam, and as far as companies go it’s an okay one. I won’t argue with the AIO buying, installing, and the myriad of features.
However installing on Linux really isn’t that hard anymore.- Install the GoG (or Epic for the free stuff) game from Heroic Launcher
- Play.*
Heroic is a better experience for installing, but I prefer Lutris, paired with lutris-gamepad-ui when not using keyboard and mouse. I made a little script to launch it when I turn on my controller, and turn off the controller when I quit. I’m in a game in a few seconds, even if I didn’t play in a month - when bluetooth doesn’t for some reason take 10s to connect
Even if some tinkering was needed, for a game I play often I would have spend less time waiting compared to using Steam.
*conditions may apply
Functionally, yes. Legally, no.
Can you transfer your game to someone else? If not, then its not functionally yes either.
Put the installer on a usb drive (or a cd if you’re cool) and hand it over to the person you want to “transfer” it to. Physical media, like the good old days. Except it’s better because all the drm is gone.
You can just copy the installer and send it to them, so functionally it works. What you can’t do is transfer the license which means legaly no just as the comment said.
to all the people bitching about steam. this post doesn’t even mention steam. this post is about GOG. you’re literally in the wrong thread.
also, if you don’t like it, pirate it.
thank you for your attention to this manner.
Technically no, it still grants you a license like any other store. In practice it’s a bit closer to ownership than what you get with other stores, as GOG does not have the ability to take your games away once you have downloaded them and you can do whatever you want with the files. But you still can’t legally sell your copy for example.
In the Germany you are allowed to sell it, however no platform has implemented this and nobody fought for it yet. But there are several verdicts regarding this.
I’ve been laughed at for this before, but I feel like this is exactly what NFTs could be used for. You could resell it and you’d lose the access to the game. I really feel like this would make digital game ownership a thing, without “akshully it’s a license”
Who manages the access, who platforms, and serves the NFT content?
If it’s up to the store to do so, you don’t need NFT for that. The store can already do that.
You know what, that’s the most sense I think I ever heard regarding nft. However it breaks at two points.
For one the software itself needs to be dongled with this, which brings a lot of issues and dependencies.
The other thing is the nft cryptography needs to be safe and reliable ‘forever’. Cryptography is ever evolving so it might be okay for now, but who knows, especially with quantum processing supposedly close by, for how long.
It’s just that NFTs are a needlessly complicated way to implement that.
My understanding, or assumption from considering classic physical goods, is that if you buy the digital product you may be able to resell it, but if you license it it’s not buying and you don’t own a product you can resell.
If GoG licenses you a product you can download and can archive, then it’s not bought and may not be resellable. (?)
